Fluid reservoirs, such as inkjet printer ink cartridges, commonly have one or more ports with an opening through which fluid is delivered during use. In order to prevent loss of fluid, for example, by spillage or evaporation during shipping or storage, it is common to provide a cap seal for the port or ports. For cases where the cap seal is a compressible material which needs to be pressed against the port, a sealing retainer may be used to provide the force to compress the seal and hold it in place.
Fluid-ejection printing devices, such as ink jet printers, commonly have at least one fluid reservoir, such as an ink cartridge, and a printhead chassis that supports the ink cartridge. In the case of ink jet printers, the ink cartridge may contain one or more fluid chambers that provide fluid to a printhead die. If the ink cartridge has more than one fluid chamber, each such chamber often retains ink of a different color for multi-color printing. On the other hand, if the ink cartridge has only a single fluid chamber, typically such chamber is used to retain a single ink such as black ink for black-and-white printing.
The printhead die contains nozzles that eject fluid from the ink cartridge onto a substrate and typically is connected directly or indirectly to the chassis. In order to form an image, the printhead die, along with the chassis and the ink cartridge, generally are moved by a printhead carriage in a lateral direction across a width of a substrate, such as paper, as fluid is ejected from the printhead die. After the printhead die forms a row-portion of the image along the width of the substrate, the substrate is advanced in a direction perpendicular to the lateral direction along a length of the substrate, so that the printhead die can form a subsequent row-portion of the image. This process of advancing the substrate for each row-portion is repeated until a next substrate is needed or the image is completed.
When a fluid chamber in the ink cartridge runs out of ink, a user is charged with the responsibility of removing the empty ink cartridge from the chassis and replacing it with a full ink cartridge. The task of replacing an ink cartridge must be simple and clean. For example, fluid should not be allowed to stain the user's hands. The design of the seal retainer must be such that it is easy to remove the seal retainer from the ink cartridge in such a way that the user's fingers do not come into contact with ink.
In addition, some designs of ink cartridges, or other types of fluid reservoirs, have a data storage device mounted on the reservoir. The data storage device tracks ink usage during printing, as well as other data such as ink type and manufacturing date of the reservoir. Recent commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/614,160, filed Dec. 21, 2006 by W. Trafton et al., describes a mounting arrangement in which the data storage device is mounted on a pedestal that protrudes from the reservoir body. An advantage of such an arrangement is that the pedestal may protrude into or through a corresponding opening in the body of the printhead chassis. In this way, electronic connection can be made from the data storage device on the ink cartridge directly to a connector on the printhead carriage, and optionally from there to electronics in the printer body. While such a mounting arrangement provides advantages when the ink cartridge is installed into the printer, the data storage device on the pedestal can be susceptible to damage if the ink cartridge is dropped. Furthermore, there are alignment features on the reservoir body that could also be damaged if the cartridge is dropped or otherwise mishandled.
Accordingly, a need in the art exists for a cap seal retainer solution that allows a user to simply and cleanly remove the a shipping cap seal from a new ink cartridge and also that provides protection to the data storage device, and optionally to one or more alignment features.